Wednesday, October 5, 2016

In my class, sixth grade, I'm challenging my students every day. I've entered the public system four years ago, after managing different projects as an expert in creativity and being categorized as a "problem solver". when I entered the school I'm working in today I've noticed that the children are dealing great with reading comprehension we have in the text book, but can't understand higher articles.

I've decided to use a method of uncertainty in the class, which build from 3 steps:

1. Excepting the fact that I (the student) will not understand some of the reading material (or task)- and it's ok.
2. Read & summarize as we learned- high light difficult words/ expression, high light main sentence in a paragraph and summarize each paragraph/ idea.
3. Trying in a group to build a logic flow of the article/ story/ other.

when the children started they were upset, confused and even angry. we worked step by step solving the articles I've brought to class (I can't share them with you, because they are in Hebrew; but the criterion to choose them are: suitable from 9th grade, have current affairs link to the students life and have a pedagogical context).

After a month I can say that I have 5 great reasons to continue with this method, once a week, a two hours lesson:

1. The level of expectations raised and the students understand the benefits and the wide range of
topics that are added to the class.
2. Higher use of reading strategies in all the language fields (history, geography, etc)
3. The level of the conversations changed and become broadly contexted to different areas, and I love
connect areas of knowledge to subjects.
Some students started to be herd in class.
4. While coping with higher language the understanding, the vocabulary and the expression and
developing.
5. I'm revealing difficulties that I couldn't see in a class of 36 students before, for example- the
difficulty of explaining a term with no examples- and working on it.